Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Daily Report: Google’s Detractors Lobby State Attorneys General

By The New York Times December 17, 2014 10:12 amDecember 17, 2014 10:12 am

Photo

Credit

They have lobbied state attorneys general. They have hired former state attorneys general. They have even helped draft a menacing letter for one state attorney general, Nick Wingfield and Eric Lipton write.

And they have given the target — Google — a code name: Goliath.

Google’s detractors complain about the search giant to everyone they can, from raising concerns about the company’s dominance with regulators in Brussels to antitrust officials in Washington. Now, they are taking the fight into states, often to push Google to censor illegal content and sites from search results.

The inner workings of those efforts are outlined in emails obtained by The New York Times through open records requests. Other details are contained in messages stolen from Sony Pictures Entertainment by hackers and obtained by The Times through an industry executive. Some of the emails from Sony have been reported by The Verge, a website.

Together, the emails show the extent of the efforts with state attorneys general. The messages detail how the Motion Picture Association of America — the Hollywood industry group — and an organization backed by Microsoft, Expedia and Oracle, among others, have aggressively lobbied attorneys general to build cases against Google in recent years, sometimes in complementary ways. Read more »